If you are looking for a good Christmas cookie for this holiday season, I strongly suggest these!
When this article from food52 about Norwegian butter cookies popped up on my Facebook newsfeed last week, I knew I had to make them. If you follow my blog, you know I’m part Greek- my other half is Norwegian. And yet, I haven’t posted any Norwegian recipes! So here we go. This is an EXCELLENT place to start. (And no, I won’t be writing about Lutefisk anytime soon. Sorry to disappoint.) These cookies are adapted from the food52 recipe to be a bit easier to make and have more almond flavor- a very common flavor in Scandinavian desserts.
Be warned: this recipe uses three sticks of butter. That’s 1.5 cups. They ARE butter cookies, after all! I recommend two things when choosing a butter:
The directions for this recipe aren’t like your typical cookie, where you mix the dry and liquid ingredients separately. Instead, the softened butter is blended with the flour to make a consistency similar to sand, kind of like cutting butter into flour for pie crust. I used a handheld electric mixer for this task and it was easy. Then, the other wet ingredients like eggs and extract are added to the dough. Some recipes say to refrigerate the dough before forming, but I didn’t have a problem using it immediately. If you want to make the dough ahead of time, it can be refrigerated in an airtight container or covered with plastic wrap for a few days. Finally, I recommend a small cookie scoop for measuring out the batter. It ensures the cookies are (mostly) uniform in size, and makes the task of rolling the dough into balls much easier. If you like this recipe, you’ll love all these other holiday baking recipes, including this Dutch Butter Cake (also made with almonds and almond extract). Recipe for Norwegian Butter Cookies (Serinakaker) below!
